TheJakartaPost
Please Update your browser
Your browser is out of date, and may not be compatible with our website. A list of the most popular web browsers can be found below.
Just click on the icons to get to the download page.
Popular Reads
Top Results
No results found. Please check your search term and try again
Can't find what you're looking for?
View all search results
Popular Reads
Top Results
No results found. Please check your search term and try again
Can't find what you're looking for?
View all search resultsExpendable lives, lack of leadership in the Sumatra disaster
Prabowo seems to live inside a political bubble, dependent on information filtered by ministers and advisers whose main job is protecting his pride rather than telling him the truth.
Change text size
Gift Premium Articles
to Anyone
Share the best of The Jakarta Post with friends, family, or colleagues. As a subscriber, you can gift 3 to 5 articles each month that anyone can read—no subscription needed!
Facing reality: President Prabowo Subianto (third left), accompanied by North Sumatra Governor Bonny Nasution (second left), greets evacuees at a shelter for victims of flash floods at MAN 1 Islamic senior high school in Tanjung Pura, Langkat regency, North Sumatra, on Dec. 13, 2025. (Antara/Hafidz Mubarak A)
F
rom an air-conditioned, secure office in Jakarta, far from the floodwaters, fallen logs and thick mud, President Prabowo Subianto continues to boast about his government's capability in handling the floods and landslides in Sumatra. Yet, three weeks after the disaster struck, people are still dying every day: some from hunger, others from disease caused by dirty water and the total absence of sanitation.
As of Dec. 18, nearly a month into the catastrophe, 1,068 people had died. Almost 3 million others have been impacted, with nearly 1 million forced to evacuate into tents. Entire communities remain cut off. Aid is slow. Basic necessities are missing. This is not a crisis that is "under control".
This disaster has revealed exactly what kind of leader Prabowo is. He should have established a command post in the center of the disaster zone, in the areas hit hardest by the devastation. He should have lived among his suffering people, managed the emergency directly, ensured problems were solved immediately and run the country from there. That is what leadership looks like.
Unfortunately for Indonesia, he does not have it in him. He appears incapable of feeling the suffering of his own people deeply enough to generate urgency. He seems to live inside a political bubble, dependent on information filtered by ministers and advisers whose main job is protecting his pride rather than telling him the truth.
Instead of introspection, Prabowo blames critics, dismissing them as malicious and politically motivated. He speaks of unnamed foreign forces that supposedly do not want Indonesia to progress. This reflex to externalize blame may be politically convenient, but it does nothing for people who are hungry, sick and homeless.
The insensitivity of the elite has been on full display. In one widely circulated video, Coordinating Food Minister Zulkifli Hasan is seen feasting at a restaurant in Aceh, seated before a long table filled with expensive food, puffing on a large cigar, just kilometers from areas where people were starving to death. The image is not merely insensitive; it is emblematic of a political elite completely detached from the disaster it claims to manage.
In another scene, Energy and Mineral Resources Minister Bahlil Lahadalia is shown lying directly to the President, claiming that electricity had been restored to most affected areas. In reality, vast parts of Sumatra remain in total darkness, as evidenced by countless videos shared online by civil society groups. Either the President is being misled, or he prefers being lied to. Both possibilities are equally alarming.
